Consider some stances toward the sun in American poetry.
In his book-length poem The Presentable Art of Reading Absence, Jay Wright has an anima muse, “I am as bright as any sun.”
Walt Whitman, in his “Song of Myself,” exclaims, “Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, / If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.”
In her poem about dour days starting “The Sun is gay or stark,” Emily Dickinson writes of the golden orb, “His mighty pleasure suits Us not / It magnifies Our Freight.”
And then, in that leviathan of a prose poem Moby-Dick, there’s Herman Melville’s Ahab declaring, “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” His ship carries casks of whale oil, useful for lamps, so perhaps Ahab imagines making do without the sun.
And now we have Leah Sullivan’s poem “Eaton Canyon Night (January 7th, 2025).”
Eaton Canyon Night (January 7th, 2025)
it’s a long, dark journey
riding nightsongs into light.
the round moon pressed into the fleshy sky
its butterglow melting down her coalsoft black
hungry tongues of fire reaching high
the wild press of wind against sharp rock
and down the channels of cold earth
they run, licking the land for a taste of living
turning gray fur to ash and bone
eating the chaparral
and belching black charcoal into the bleak atmosphere
where parrots drop noiselessly.
something’s here from another realm—
a soul darkness rolling in, ruthless host of fire at the helm.
what will be left, what seeds survive to rise
beneath the charred earth and our daggered shards of truth?
between us and the past,
only a paper curling into silent ash.
a paper curling while
our voices unwind, pleading, into dawn.
embodied in chaos,
a great charcoal serpent with flaming tongues
arches back for the strike,
poised and trembling, sights upon the sun.
— Leah Sullivan
Leah Sullivan resides in Pasadena with her husband, three cats, an overgrown library, and a small rose garden, all, thankfully, spared destruction by the nearby Eaton Fire. She is an active member of The Eastside Los Angeles Writers Group and a member of The Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective. Her youth unfolded in NYC. At eighty, she earned a BA in Literature / Creative Writing from Antioch University. She has poems published in OnTheBus, RIPRAP Literary Journal, Local News Pasadena, and the anthology Golden Horses: Poetry for a New Generation. Her self-published chapbook is titled Coda.
Local News Pasadena (LNP) publishes poems grounded in current news events from the greater Pasadena, California area. Submit your own poetry here.
Breathtakingly stunning! Each line of this poem is a poem unto itself, and, taken as a whole, is shattering in its sensuality. Each read brings a new whallop! I agree with the comments above that put Leah Sullivan in the same company as Yeats, Dickinson, and Whitman. This poem is a treasure!
Stunning poem, takes my breath away .The powerful rich visuals so real I can smell it and feel the heat and the terror.
Leah Sullivan’s ability to capture emotion in her word sketches of nature always stops me in my tracks. “Hungry tongues of fire” and “paper curling into silent ash”bring me right into the fearful watching (for me from afar) of the devastation of the fires, into the worry for loved ones and their homes, their communities, the land they live on. My particular love of Pasadena’s wild parrots makes the line about these raucous birds “dropping noiselessly” from the sky a powerful, horrible symbol for the vast loss of life – even of joy – the fires caused. Leah Sullivan is my Pasadena Poet Laureate, a treasure in the LA art scene.
We saw on television what the fire was doing as it destroyed it’s way down the canyon but Leah Sullivan’s poem captures how it felt to be there, watching as it moved animal like and seemed to come from a different realm, a dark and ominous place, eating up all in its path and leaving nothing but ash. Her poem exemplifies the difference between description and art.
Love this poem. It’s so helpful to view such major, extreme events with the nuance that Leah’s poetry conveys. There is so much subtlety that is not covered by ordinary mainstream communication, but only by such poetry and art.
Excellently and elegantly expressed the devastating sadness the fire brought on the land it consumed.
This poem has the power of the howling wind and fear of that night. Leah has told the story in the emotions that I felt. A great powerful poem>
Great job Leah! Feels like I’m back in the fire. Very evocative.
What a powerful poem! The imagery is so evocative. Piercing. Really beautifully written!
Love this poem! Reminds me of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”.
Leah Sullivan holds her own in the company of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, bringing the anthropomorphy of the destructive, creative and potentially redemptive power of fire.